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After years and years of incredible nuance on behalf of Bush Administration torture policies ("Golly, what *is* torture anyway! It's all so confusing!"), after years of warm and sympathetic hearings for any and all arguments that, however tendentious, explain away the obvious teaching of the Church in a cloud of sophistry, after playing empathetic host all the usual suspect from the Ladies' Gossip Sewing Circle--shazam! ...

Having a day job (imagine that), I was initially going to compose a point-by-point rebuttal to Shea's latest.

Re-reading his rant, however, I won't even dignify it with that.

A sober perusal of my prior posts on the subject will discern the nature of my disagreement with Shea: that any legitimate disagreements with the Bush administration that could be mounted are obfuscated by his tendency to play fast and loose with the facts; imbue dubious motives to his critics, and substitute the virtual equivalent of sheer playground bullying for civil, rational and charitable debate -- which has, over the course of the past three years, alienated a number of erstwhile friends and readers within the Catholic online community who would have otherwise supported him.

"Torture in the News" December 23, 2009. A look at the report by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) on the treatment of detainees in U.S. Custody; Waterboarding; alternatives to 'aggressive interrogation'.

The big news of this week: Obama's first executive orders were not the reversal of the Mexico City Policy (as every major media source and not a few bloggers had predicted, and for which Obama waited until Friday) but the reversal of notable Bush administration's policies on the incarceration and interrogation of detainees:

President Obama signed executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said.

The orders, which are the first steps in undoing detention policies of former President George W. Bush, rewrite American rules for the detention of terrorism suspects. They require an immediate review of the 245 detainees still held at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to determine if they should be transferred, released or prosecuted.

And the orders bring to an end a Central Intelligence Agency program that kept terrorism suspects in secret custody for months or years, a practice that has brought fierce criticism from foreign governments and human rights activists. They will also prohibit the C.I.A. from using coercive interrogation methods, requiring the agency to follow the same rules used by the military in interrogating terrorism suspects, government officials said.

However, while some cheerleaders for Obama are already hailing an end to the gestapo-inspired “enhanced interrogration [Sic] techniques”, a review of critical responses -- from the political "right" AND "left" -- suggests that the President's gesture is more symbolic and an exercise in moral posturing than anything else. It appears that serious questions remain about what is actually accomplished by President Obama's recent executive orders.

A section of Obama’s order on Guantanamo entitled “Humane Standards of Confinement” orders Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to spend the next thirty days reviewing the current conditions at the Caribbean prison to make sure they’re legal and follow the Geneva Convention. It seems doubtful that Gates, who has been atop the chain of command for Guantanamo for more than two years, will suddenly find conditions that were just fine on Monday of this week are now flagrant violations of the Geneva Convention.

Take Guantanamo Bay, the oft-maligned subject of the first order. In announcing the closure of the prison there, the president forcefully asserted that he was following through on a campaign commitment. But the order only promises that the facility will be closed within a year—a nonbinding deadline Obama could extend simply by signing another order. That’s not exactly the immediate shuttering his antiwar base was clamoring for, and such delay would be intolerable if Obama really believed Gitmo were the travesty he has portrayed it as.

Moreover, the physical facility itself is of only symbolic importance. The underlying question is what to do with the detainees held there. On that, the executive orders tell us precious little.

We obviously have to wait for further implementation of policies with regard to Guantanamo Bay, but it’s important to note just how limited this executive order really is. All that it promises to do is to close the particular facility at Guantanamo Bay. It does not in any way promise to end the policy of keeping detainees in prison camps for long periods of time without judicial review, habeas corpus, or opportunity to seek counsel. This Order sets up a two-step review process, by a committee entirely chosen by the President and subject only to his absolute authority, whose proceedings are not made public, at whose proceedings a detainee is not apparently entitled to counsel, and whose decisions appear to be subject to no appeal process whatsoever. Of course, the Order is quite explicit that it “does not create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States.”

The committee is free to decide whether it is possible to transfer or release the individual, and, if not, whether it is “feasible” to prosecute such persons. If not, then the committee is not compelled to release such persons, or even to disclose what is to be done with such persons—instead, the committee will “select lawful means, consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice, for the disposition of such individuals.” Of course, what does “lawful means” actually refer to? The previous administration, of course, considered all of its means to be “lawful” also.

includes instructions regarding solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, and, in combination with other procedures included in the Army Field Manual, amounted to a re-introduction of the psychological torture techniques practiced at Guantanamo, and taught by Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, or SERE psychologists and other personnel at the Cuban base and elsewhere.

The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

His status was announced in an Internet statement by the militant group and was confirmed by an American counterterrorism official.

Practically buried in the news in the wake of the corruption scandal of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was the publication, on December 11, of a report by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) -- the culmination of an 18-month long investigation into the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody:

A major focus of the Committee’s investigation was the influence of Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) training techniques on the interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody. SERE training is designed to teach our soldiers how to resist interrogation by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions and international law. During SERE training, U.S. troops --- in a controlled environment with great protections and caution --- are exposed to harsh techniques such as stress positions, forced nudity, use of fear, sleep deprivation, and until recently, the waterboard. The SERE techniques were never intended to be used against detainees in U.S. custody. The Committee’s investigation found, however, that senior officials in the U.S. government decided to use some of these harsh techniques against detainees based on deeply flawed interpretations of U.S. and international law.

The Committee concluded that the authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques by senior officials was both a direct cause of detainee abuse and conveyed the message that it was okay to mistreat and degrade detainees in U.S. custody.

Chairman Levin said, “SERE training techniques were designed to give our troops a taste of what they might be subjected to if captured by a ruthless, lawless enemy so that they would be better prepared to resist. The techniques were never intended to be used against detainees in U.S. custody.”

Senator McCain said, “The Committee’s report details the inexcusable link between abusive interrogation techniques used by our enemies who ignored the Geneva Conventions and interrogation policy for detainees in U.S. custody. These policies are wrong and must never be repeated.”

The latest inquiry into detainee treatment by the Senate Armed Services Committee breaks little new ground – merely reiterating the findings of at least 12 previous independent investigations, which reported that certain isolated and limited incidents of detainee abuse occurred in the handling of detainees in U.S. custody. The implication, however, that this abuse was the direct, necessary, or foreseeable result of policy decisions made by senior administration officials is false and without merit. It is counter-productive and potentially dangerous to our men and women in uniform to insinuate that illegal treatment of detainees resulted from official U.S. government policies. [Read the rest]

Prisoner abuse should not be taken lightly. There have been nearly two dozen detainee deaths reported, five of which are believed to have occurred during interrogations. But these episodes are endemic to warfare, not peculiar to the Bush era or a result of the president’s policies. Abuse is not to be tolerated — and it isn’t: dozens of U.S. military personnel have been disciplined and a number tried in courts-martial. There is a world of difference between relatively rare wrongdoing at the hands of a miniscule number of soldiers and a government program of torture.

The torture narrative is at odds with the facts. The U.S. does not have a policy of torturing captives, nor does it fail to abide by its obligations under the Geneva Conventions. When abuse has occurred, steps have been taken to punish the wrongdoers and rectify military practices. Those efforts will continue. A sober study would have made that clear. Congressional Democrats have instead found it expedient to smear the administration, the military, and the intelligence community for political purposes.

[A] 2004 report on Abu Ghraib by Army Gen. Paul Kern found 44 incidents of abuse at the Iraqi prison, but absolved Rumsfeld and other administration officials from responsibility. An August 2004 investigation by former Secretary James Schlesinger concluded that Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials bore some indirect responsibility for the Abu Ghraib abuses, but also underscored that “there is no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials or military authorities.” In Guantanamo Bay, a 2005 Army Regulation report examining 24,000 interrogations conducted over a three-year period “found no evidence of torture or inhumane treatment” at Gitmo. One may reasonably take these investigations as proof that the Bush administration, whatever its mistakes, had no systematic policy to “torture” detainees.

Some quick observations:

Waterboarding

The most controversial SERE techniques adopted for use in interrogations is waterboarding - immobilizing the subject and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages, so as to bring on the simulation of drowning.

Waterboarding is commonly accepted to be a form of physical torture. It was used by Japanese soldiers against American POWS during World War II; by French soldiers during the Algerian war, and was designated as illegal by U.S. generals during the Vietnam war.

The protest launched by some, "if that's the case, we have tortured members of our own armed forces (during SERE training)" is rather flimsy: does training our troops to endure waterboarding (with the expectation that they would be subjected to them by an enemy, and precisely that: an enemy not subject to the Geneva conventions) therefore legitimize our right to waterboard those we capture? -- I would say not.

"Aggressive Interrogation Techniques"

The predominant focus of the report, however, is not so much the rare use of waterboarding as the entire range of SERE tactics -- “stress positions, removal of clothing, use of phobias (such as fear of dogs), and deprivation of light and auditory stimuli” -- which were approved by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in 2002 for use in special interrogations.

Do these "aggressive interrogation techniques" also amount to torture? -- This is something that the Levin-McCain report assumes, although it is a topic of much dispute, both in the general public as well as our Catholic online community (discussed below). For an explanation of the range techniques in question, see: What is Torture? A Primer on American interrogation.

However, as stated previously, numerous investigations into the abuses of Abu Ghraib have concluded otherwise. The investigation conducted by 2004 Independent Panel to Review DoD Detention Operations headed by James R. Schlesinger concurred with the findings of several previous investigations that Abu Ghraib was the consequence of "serious leadership problems"; that techniques circulating from Guantanamo and Afghanistan "effective under controlled conditions ... became far more problematic when they migrated and were not properly safeguarded"; likewise "the abberant behavior of the nightshift in Cell Block 1 at Abu Ghraib would have been avoided with proper training, leadership and oversight." Ultimately, it concluded that "No approved procedures called for or allowed the kinds of abuse that in fact occurred. There is no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials or military authorities."

Torture as defined in international agreements to which the U.S. is party—outrages against human dignity, humiliation, degradation, mutilation, the threat of death—is never morally permissible. Admittedly, a measure of coercion, both physical and mental, is inevitably involved in most interrogation. The very fact of being in custody and under threat of punishment is a form of coercion. The task is to draw as bright a line as possible between such coercion and torture, and to forbid the latter absolutely. The uncompromisable principle is that it is always wrong to do evil in order that good may result. This principle is taught in numerous foundational texts of our civilization and is magisterially elaborated in the 1993 encyclical of John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor. We cannot ask God's blessing upon a course of action that entails the deliberate doing of evil. When something like Abu Ghraib happens, the appropriate response of patriotic Americans is one of deep sorrow, clear condemnation, and a firm resolution that it not happen again.

During October 2006 various members of the Catholic online community ("St. Blog's") engaged in a discussion, both on the theoretical level and that of practical policy, on these questions. Mark Shea has taken John Paul II's list of actions which were deemed "intrinsically evil" in Veritatis Splendour ("whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit") as officially settling the matter -- while other participants such as Catholic apologists Jimmy Akin, David Armstrong and Father Brian W. Harrison (in a contribution to Catholic Answers' The Church & TortureThis Rock December 2006; as well as Torture and Corporal Punishment as a Problem in Catholic Moral TheologyLiving Tradition Sept. 2005), are of the opinion that the passage does not suffice as an absolute condemnation, and have labored to distinguish between what coercion and torture.

It is, by all appearances, a debate that is far from over. Most recently, another Catholic writer, Ross Douthat, In Thinking About Torture (The Atlantic, Dec. 16, 2008), Ross Douthat, penned his "own inarticulate mix of anger, uncertainty and guilt about the Bush Administration's interrogation policy" and "the sheer muddiness that surrounds my own thinking (such as it is) on the issue":

... the waterboarding of al Qaeda's high command, despite the controversy it's generated, is not in fact the biggest moral problem posed by the Bush Administration's approach to torture and interrogation. The biggest problem is the sheer scope of the physical abuse that was endorsed from on high - the way it was routinized, extended to an ever-larger pool of detainees, and delegated ever-further down the chain of command. Here I'm more comfortable saying straightforwardly that this should never have been allowed - that it should be considered impermissible as well as immoral, and that it should involve disgrace for those responsible, the Cheneys and Rumsfelds as well as the people who actually implemented the techniques that the Vice President's office promoted and the Secretary of Defense signed off on.

As Ross observes, the case made by some that the record of human rights violations which occurred under the watch of the Bush Administration -- such as the abuses of Abu Ghraib and the rendition of detainees to CIA "black sites" -- is somehow altogether different from what occurred in the past, crumbles in the light of historical examination. As he puts it:

... as far as the baseline of Bush Administration wrongdoing goes - the decision to take an ends-justify-the-means approach to the interrogation of terror suspects - I do think it needs to be placed in historical context, and treated as an example of the kind of consequentialism that's endemic to modern Presidencies (and to international affairs more generally), rather than as a distinct break with a more idealistic, human-rights-centric American past.

She brings a whole lot of information to the table, whether on details of extraordinary renditions, debates within the CIA over how to handle those it snatched around the world, bureaucratic infighting throughout the administration over interrogation and detention policy, or the extreme anxiety officials felt about how best to conduct the fight against the enemy. She reports on new documents; she has clearly had significant access to key players. What’s more, the texture of her reporting gets down and dirty enough to make phrases like “coercive interrogation” all too real. No decent person can read her account of the CIA’s interrogation program without something approaching nausea.

Unfortunately, says Witte, her efforts are marred by an attempt to fit the travails of the Bush Administration in the wake of 9/11 into an all-too-simplistic moral narrative:

perhaps her biggest mistake is the one that resides in that subtitle and her related Manichean sense of the Bush administration as a hard-fought internal war between good and evil, between torturers and decent conservatives, between those who believe in the rule of law and those who do not, between practitioners of the old tried and true methods of fighting terrorists and those who eagerly chose to dwell in what Mayer’s arch-villain, Vice President Dick Cheney, once called “the dark side.”

As Witte demonstrates, this leads to questions of fairness in Mayer's casting of certain characters, and negligence to entertain evidence which would complicate her portrayal of Bush administration officials as the villains. This reminds me of DarwinCatholic's caution in a recent post to The American Catholic:

The most rewarding approach to history is to understand as sympathetically as possible the motivations of all those on both sides of major historical conflicts. Picking a “good guy” and “bad guy” and engaging in constant denunciations of specific acts is generally not condusive to this. Certainly, that does not mean that one may not judge the morality of historical events. But it does mean taking a less judgemental approach to history as a whole.

Simplistic narratives are generally the enemy of historical understanding.

* * *

Lastly, we should acknowledge that the use of "aggressive interrogation" techniques, even if licit, may not be necessary or warranted. Consider the recent testimony of Matthew Alexander (not his real name), a former professional interrogator who says he's still tortured by what he saw in Iraq:

I should have felt triumphant when I returned from Iraq in August 2006. Instead, I was worried and exhausted. My team of interrogators had successfully hunted down one of the most notorious mass murderers of our generation, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the mastermind of the campaign of suicide bombings that had helped plunge Iraq into civil war. But instead of celebrating our success, my mind was consumed with the unfinished business of our mission: fixing the deeply flawed, ineffective and un-American way the U.S. military conducts interrogations in Iraq. I'm still alarmed about that today.

Dissatisfied with what he referred to as the "Guantanamo Bay Model" -- "Interrogators were nominally using the methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the interrogators' bible, but they were pushing in every way possible to bend the rules -- and often break them" -- the former senior interrogator at Iraq embarked on a different strategy:

I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information. I personally conducted more than 300 interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified (they're listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of "ruses and trickery"). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi.

if you look at the way we do criminal interrogations in the United States, you can certainly tell a criminal suspect what are the consequences for a crime that they've committed, or that you suspect they've committed. So that, I think, is a permissible and ethical way to conduct an interrogation. However, it's not the most effective. The most-effective techniques are those that rely on rapport-building and relationship-building and then adapt that into the culture of the person that you're interrogating.

Four former detainees at Guantanamo — Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal al-Harith — are litigating in Rasul vs. Rumsfeld to hold government officials accountable for torture they endured while being held there. (All were found innocent of terrorist activity and released in 2004.) Represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the four British citizens first cited violations of the U.S. Constitution and international law, but these were thrown out by the district court because the alleged misconduct (beatings, painful shackling, interrogation at gunpoint, use of dogs, extreme temperatures and sleep deprivation) was seen as occurring during the "course of war." But allegations of deliberate attacks on religion were not so easily ignored and are currently being considered by an appeals court in Washington, D.C.

The former Gitmo detainees allege they were forced to shave their beards, were systematically interrupted while praying, denied the Qu’ran and prayer mats, made to pray with exposed genitals and forced to watch as the Qu’ran was thrown into a toilet bucket. Obviously, the only reason for such abuse would be to crush inmates psychologically by insulting their religion. Therefore it could, if proven, violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which seeks to protect religious expression.

[T]here remains the question [...] of torture inflicted not for any of the above purposes, but for extracting life-saving information from, say, a captured terrorist known to be participating in an attack that may take thousands of lives (the now-famous ?ticking bomb? scenario). As we have noted above, this possible use of torture is not mentioned in the Catechism.. . . My understanding would be that, given the present status question is, the moral legitimacy of torture under the aforesaid desperate circumstances, while certainly not affirmed by the magisterium, remains open at present to legitimate discussion by Catholic theologians.

His speculations on this matter ring no different to me than those of Jimmy Akin (circa June 2004):

The Catechism's discussion of torture (CCC 2298) focuses significantly on the motive that is being pursued in different acts of torture. If it means us to understand that having a particular motive is necessary for an act to count as torture then it might turn out that some acts commonly described as torture are in fact not torture . . .

For example, the Catechism's list of motives for torture does not mention the use of physical pressure to obtain information needed to save innocent lives. It thus might turn out that it is not torture to twist a terrorist's arm behind him and demand that he tell you where he planted a bomb so that it can be defused and innocents can be saved. Certainly the kind of things that Jack Bauer may do on 24 are very different morally from the kinds of things that happened in Soviet prisons.

I would be disinclined to go the route of saying that torture is not always wrong. I think that the Church is pretty clearly indicating in its recent documents that it wants the word "torture" used in such a way that torture is always wrong. However, I don't think that the Magisterium has yet thoroughly worked out all the kinds of "hard case" situations one can imagine and whether they count as torture.

I've come to the conclusion that the debate on this comes down to mostly semantics and personal hostilities. I saw that early on when I realized that folks (including myself at first) were sloppy in differentiating the terms "torture" and "coercion" in various contexts, thus leading to further confusion (within the framework of cynicism and suspicion on both sides).

Fr. Harrison equates "torture" with "the infliction of severe pain." This leads him to conclude that "the moral legitimacy of torture under the aforesaid desperate circumstances, while certainly not affirmed by the magisterium, remains open at present to legitimate discussion" -- something which is incoherent, if torture is understood to be something that is intrinsically evil. (I'm well aware what "intrinsic" means and what it implies).

For Jimmy Akin, there are cases of torture (intrinsically evil). But there are also cases where coercion -- even coercion by "the infliction of severe pain" -- might be legitimate: "the use of physical pressure to obtain information needed to save innocent lives." Thus for Jimmy, "Certainly the kind of things that Jack Bauer may do on 24 are very different morally from the kinds of things that happened in Soviet prisons," and "it might turn out that some acts commonly described as torture are in fact not torture."

I suppose if you posed the question to Fr. Harrison, he might agree with Jimmy Akin that there are acts which are "commonly described as torture" which are not, in fact, such. Jimmy Akin and Fr. Harrison may differ in their labeling, but they both seem to agree that in some cases (the "24" or "ticking bomb" scenario), coercion by physical force (to some degree) to obtain information for the purpose of saving innocent lives might be legitimate. Both appear to be mutually agreed that this remains an open topic of discussion among Catholic moral theologians (and Catholic apologists and bloggers to boot).

Now -- Mark / Zippy -- here is where I am confused:

1) You (Zippy) see Jimmy Akin's stance as problematic. At least I have that hunch, given your insistence:

At some point, no doubt at a different point for each individual, it is going to dawn on people that "torture is intrinsically evil" and "under these different circumstances the same act isn't torture and is therefore permissable" are mutually contradictory statements.

The confusion is compounded by the fact that the speculations of Tom McKenna -- with respect to the Catechism -- are hardly distinguishable from Jimmy's.

Jimmy's speculation that

"if [the Catechism] means us to understand that having a particular motive is necessary for an act to count as torture then it might turn out that some acts commonly described as torture are in fact not torture" . . . Certainly the kind of things that Jack Bauer may do on 24 are very different morally from the kinds of things that happened in Soviet prisons.

sounds much akin to these ears to Tom McKenna's speculation that:

. . . the Catechism, by its plain language, it is directed at the motivation of the conduct, not the content of the conduct. Hence it rejects torture intended to produce confessions, punish the guilty, etc. But the methods we use against our enemies (which again, are not "torture" under civil law) are not engaged in to induce confessions. We use these methods to secure actionable intelligence about our enemies. What Lyndie England did might arguably fall under this definition, since she was motivated by hatred or some other illegitimate motive. What a trained interrogator might uncover through controlled, judicious use of such methods is clearly not encompassed by this definition.

(Indeed, as deplorable as those abuses which occurred at Abu Ghraib were, what is put on display by the Fox Network in the television show 24 could be said to be far worse. However, I do not intend to spark a specific discussion of the precise acts used under "desparate circumstances" -- only the similarities of the arguments).

Here, again, I think Zippy would find both the reasoning of Jimmy and McKenna problematic. Yet Mark maintains a certain silence with respect to Jimmy, tears into McKenna, and insists to me that he "agrees with Zippy."

But consider what Mark has to say, for instance, about the use of the '24 scenario':

The particular guy I cite achieves his sleight of hand defense of torture by quoting the Catechism and attempting to say that what the Church *really* means is that torture which is not committed for a good purpose is bad, but that *good* torture (done by decent folk for a good end such as saving Keifer Sutherland in the Real World of "24") is okay.

The "particular guy" Mark cites is not Jimmy Akin but rather Tom McKenna -- who, if you follow the link, didn't even mention the television show.

I believe that the Church has exercised its authentic magisterium in condemning the use of torture, and this cannot be safely ignored. The problem is that the Magisterium has not yet provided us with a precise description of what counts as torture, and thus it is presently a matter of debate whether particular practices are or are not torture.

I also would hold that, whatever torture is (when properly defined), it is intrinsically evil and thus cannot be justified by circumstances. The question is whether all things that are regarded by some as torture actually are torture. It may turn out that some things that some individuals call "torture" are not actually torture, just as some things that are commonly regarded as the sin of theft are not actually the sin of theft (e.g., taking food from a person who has plenty when you are starving and he will not sell it to you).

Again, I think Jimmy's argument fails to elude Zippy's criticism. If there are mitigating circumstances that would lead one to conclude that what appears as theft ISN'T theft, there might also be mitigating circumstances where "some things that some individuals call "torture" are not actually torture."

Proceeding to spend the rest of this year, in post after post, laying into Fr. Harrison, Victor Morton, Tom McKenna, Chris Fotos, et al. in his usual vitriolic style -- and insisting that his assessment of this position "is pretty much the same as Zippy's."

In a nutshell, this inconsistency in Mark's approach is a cause of much consternation by those who have been on the receiving end of Mark's deprecation at Catholic & Enjoying It.

* * *

Jimmy Akin, you come late into this debate and I won't put upon you to read the reams of comments and heated exchanges between all of us. However, in your last post on the subject, you had mentioned "if folks are interested, I can try to offer further thoughts in the future."

Sorry to put you on the spot here, but I would be most appreciative were you to follow up with your own analysis of Fr. Harrison's two-part survey and conclusions drawn -- and perhaps clarify your own position on the topic: under what criteria would actions "commonly described as torture" not, in fact, be such?.

I'm going to cease blogging on this matter in pursuit of other topics (collective sigh of relief from the combox). There isn't much more I can add at this point. I do thank Zippy and company at Enchiridion Militis for engaging my comment, and I'll be following that discussion, as well as the other exchanges noted here.

In what has become the characteristic approach of Catholic and Enjoying It, Mark dismisses a post by Tom McKenna by saying that he was "orgasmic at the idea of hanging Saddam," that his "blog is more or less devoted to obsessing over how to execute as many people as humanly possible," and that he had an "insatiable hunger and thirst for death, death, death, and more death."

Responding with what has likewise become my characteristic rejection of Mark's approach (played out over the course of a three-part series on Mark's treatment of the 'neocons' in August 2006 and a four-part series on "the torture debate" in October 2006), Mark expresses his frustration with my "fair and balanced act."

ZippyCatholic likewise issues a challenge:

"It is all well and good to link to a lot of what other people say and think, though of course any "roundup" is going to have biases built into it (if for no other reason than that not every opinion has the merit to be put on an equal platform with every other opinion, as evidenced by Christopher's failure to publish the opinions of Catholics for a Free Choice with the same noncommital dispassion as he publishes the opinions of the Coalition).

But what do you think is true, Christopher? Do you actually have any opinions of your own, or do we have to glean them implicitly by reading the tea leaves in what you do and do not choose to publish in your "roundups"? Can't we all agree that someone must be wrong? . . .

These things aren't OK. Christopher presents some of them as if they are OK. If his point is "Mark is right in substance on these issues, but I wish he was different in how he approached them rhetorically" then Christopher is more than capable of just saying that outright. I suspect he doesn't say that because that isn't his position in fact. And I would have more respect for his position if he would just come out and say what it is outright, come out and own it rather than posting endless roundups and leaving us to guess from his editorial decisions where he is coming from himself

I began this post by citing approvingly Jonah Goldberg's criticism of how the "torture debate" has progressed so far:

It steals a base to say that the Bush Administration wants to legalize torture because you first have to demonstrate that what they want to do is torture. I think it is a perfectly defensible and honorable position to claim that waterboarding, sleep deprivation etc. amount to torture. I don't think I agree with that view. But I certainly believe it is made in good faith. But the good faith ends when the same people then issue blanket and sweeping assertions that the people who want to legalize those actions are simply pro-torture. If the legalizers were simply pro-torture they would favor hot pokers, iron maidens, finger-nail-yanking and the rest.

I'm not sure if Jonah reads Catholic & Enjoying It, but it is a good assessment nonetheless of why a good number of fellow Catholic bloggers I know have either vacated that blog or remained only to point out why this approach doesn't work.

I also agree with Evan's comment on the need for "better definition of if/when tactics like sleep deprevation, etc. can be used so that guards/soliders can't be brought to trial for simply doing things they felt were acceptable". As I stated myself:

in order to condemn an action, you have to be in a position to recognize and define what it is. Especially when defining and implementing legal regulations pertaining to "the laws of war" and prisoner interrogation, I don't see how you can go about formulating such criteria without discussing the range of actions taken.

To concur with Fr. Neuhaus: "The task is to draw as bright a line as possible between coercion and torture, and to forbid the latter absolutely."

In my first post, I had offered from the Catechism what at first read seemed a cut-and-dry rebuttal to the "But didn't the Church use Torture?" argument. However, the introduction of the two-part history by Fr. Harrison (which I was unaware of at the time of my initial writing) has since persuaded me that JPII and the Catechism's cursory paragraph-long treatment of this issue is insufficient, and I am largely appreciative of Harrison's contribution to this debate. (I will elaborate on this in a bit).

In the section, "Does Torture Ever "Work"?", I pointed to two historical cases demonstrating that torture did, indeed, "work" -- one of which was Oplan Bojinka, involving the interrogation of Hakim Murad -- co-conspirator of 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef -- who was caught by the Philippine police in 1995 and revealed plots to crash 11 commercial airliners into the Pacific Ocean. To divert attention from the airline bombings, there was a concurrent plot to kill Pope John Paul II when he visited the Philippines during the World Youth Day 1995 celebrations.

In a subsequent discussion with Victor Morton on this subject, I learned what "tactical interrogative" techniques were used by the Manila police to obtain this information and foil Al Qaeda's plans. I do not approve of the measures taken, but at the same time, I think it is certainly legitimate to inquire what techniques should be employed in instances where a terrorist is captured with concrete evidence of a plot and reasonable suspicion exists (in the case of Bojinka, plans for the attack were discovered on a laptop, after police investigated a fire in Yousef's apartment). This should put to rest Mark's assertion that "24 scenarios" simply don't exist. If it happened once, there is a good expectation that our military and intelligence operatives will encounter such a situation again.

Just for the record, I have asserted my opposition to waterboarding. I also rejected the argument from one milblogger I read that, since our own government employs waterboarding in the training of our special forces, it would be acceptable to inflict it on our enemies. Training our troops to endure such practices (with the expectation that they would be subjected to them by the enemy) does not necessarily legitimize our use of them.

On that note, I might as well add that I consider "Palestinian hanging" and "cold cells" (involving the deliberate attempt to induce hypothermia) to be torture and morally indefensible as well.

What do I think about The Military Commissions Act?

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) was the primary subject of my first roundup and my motivation for rounding up resources, responses and commentary. If I recall, it was the legislation that sparked Mark's accusations that the Bush administration "wanted more Abu Ghraibs."

I also posted a link to the actual text of the legislation, because -- silly me -- I assumed that if we were discussing it, we might want to read it ourselves.

I am not a legal scholar, so when it comes to forming my own judgement on the MCA I try to find and examine the informed criticism from both sides. For this reason I've linked to a roundup by legal scholars like John M. Balkin, as well as some counter responses -- The New Detainee Law Does Not Deny Habeas Corpus, by Andrew C. McCarthy (National Review October 3, 2006; The Constitution, Writ or Wrong, by Adam J. White (Weekly Standard October 5, 2006) -- that question, for instance, Sen. Arlen Spectre's assertion that the MCA "take[s] our civilization back 900 years," to before the adoption of the writ of habeas corpus in medieval England.

I have not yet concluded on the legislation, but given the liberties the CIA has taken with interrogation in the past decades, I think an open discussion and some attempt at regulation is a positive thing. The full implications of the MCA won't be known until it is put into practice -- Stephen Rickard believes it may actually have an opposite effect than what its critics are claiming ("Interrogators Beware"Washington Post Oct. 17th). Time will tell and I'll likely be looking more at this in the future.

While I think people should have given it more attention, the focus of 'the Catholic blogosphere' was on the interpretation of magisterial documents on the subject, which was the subject of subsequent roundups.

My subsequent roundups cover similar aspects of the debate as I tried to tie together various discussions in the Catholic blogosphere.

In my second post I disagreed with the proposal that raising questions about the validity of certain interrogation procedures and whether they constitute torture is tantamount to deceitfully asking "how close can I come to committing torture without actually doing so," -- which Mark Shea thought was comparable to asking how close can one get before committing adultery. Suffice to say I think fellow Catholics asking such questions do not harbor this intent. To quote Rich Leonardi:

Detention and interrogation are legitimate; cruelty and torture are not. Determining at what point the former crosses over into the latter is essential. Characterizing those who are making that determination as either legalists or near-torturers isn't helpful.

What do I think about Abu Ghraib?

I disagreed with Mark's display of photos of Abu Ghraib as a debating tactic and the assertion that Abu Ghraib is what the Bush administration wants, indeed, "fighting tooth and nail" to achieve, and that "People were prosecuted and sent to jail for [Abu Ghraib] because it would have been political suicide not to do so."

I am not inclined to believe that the only reason our government was involved in bringing the abusers of Abu Ghraib to justice was for reasons of political expediency, and that they are incapable of remorse or moral repulsion. (The way Mark describes Bush, you'd think he would be happily applying electrodes to the captive's testacles). So I examined the topic for myself and came across some articles which challenged Mark's characterization (The 'Torture Narrative' Unravels", by Robert Pollack Wall Street Journal Oct. 2, 2005; Military Justice at Abu GhraibJurist Sept. 28, 2005).

I noted that the Defense Department Directive for Detainee Programs and the Army Field Manual for Human Intelligence Collector Operations were developed in part as a response to the abuses.

At the same time, I shared with my readers what I believe to be a persistent problem of civilian contractors who played an instrumental role in Abu Ghraib (as described in "The Unaccountables"American Prospect September 2006). Falling outside the military's jurisdiction, such individuals have eluded legal prosecution.

I continued to examine this aspect of the abuses at Abu Ghraib in my third roundup of the "torture debate", when I uncovered an exclusive interview Army Reserve Brigadier General Janis Karpinski that supported the thesis that the chief problem at Abu Ghraib was not the CIA (about whom she praises as "the consumate professionals", and not prone to endangering the health or life of their charges) but rather civilian contractors, placed in positions of responsibility for interrogation and who operate without supervision, accountability or under the jurisdiction of the army. As a Salon.com article asserted, "The use of civilian contractors is key to understanding Abu Ghraib" ("Contract to torture", by Osha Gray. August 9, 2004).

As I stated then and will reiterate:

In short, while the DoD's response to the Abu Ghraib scandal and other incidents of detainee abuse is commendable -- according to the American Prospect, more than 250 officers and soldiers have been held accountable -- the process for taking legal action against contractors and those not directly under the jurisdiction of the military presents a grave impediment to justice, as evidence by the fact that "none of the civilian workers from Abu Ghraib have even been put on trial."

We can agree that this remains a problem to be rectified. Nevertheless, as regrettable as it is, it does not remotely warrant the suggestion that the Bush administration is not concerned about detainee abuse, or that the only reason disciplinary actions have been taken is "because it would have been political suicide not to do so.

* * *

What do I think about Fr. Harrison?

In subsequent roundups of "the torture debate", I linked to others who were engaged in similar discussions, howebeit in a less polemical manner and perhaps for that reason seemed to bear more fruit. Many of these conversations centered on the treatment of Fr. Brian Harrison's two-part examination, "[following] the classical procedure of examining in turn the witness of Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium."

Fr. Harrison's survey of torture is troubling. He finds "Christian witness on [torture] . . . not only sparse, but is also, on the whole, disappointing. What we see is an instance of the familiar scenario in which a pendulum drawn too far in one direction swings rapidly to the opposite extreme when suddenly released."

In examining Gaudium Et Spes (and John Paul II's later use in quoting the passage in Veritatis Splendor #80), his key interest is in discerning exactly what is being referred to in the Council's condemnation. What is not attempted is a precise definition of torture; rather, in light of its pastoral nature, what it refers to are those kinds of torture which have actually been going on in the 20th century:

By the 1960s probably not a single country was left on earth whose penal code still openly and shamelessly provided for torture, with corresponding legislation regulating its application. At the same time, however, 20th-century Communist and Nazi regimes, along with many other petty dictatorships, especially in Latin America, Asia and Africa – not to mention any number of proscribed terrorist and criminal organizations – had been clandestinely refining, and ruthlessly applying, any number of new and horrendous torture techniques.

That, I suggest, is essentially the kind of torture contemplated and condemned by Vatican II, and then subsequently branded by John Paul II, as one example of "intrinsically evil" practices among others, when he quotes the Council word for word in Veritatis Splendor #80. I do not think we can conclude much more than this about the morality of pain infliction from these two magisterial texts alone. For that would be trying to make them provide answers to questions they did not set out to address.

The ensuing analysis from Harrison has been the subject of much discussion in the comboxes:

The Council itself, as we have pointed out, is contemplating, and roundly condemning, the currently existing phenomenon of torture, which happens to include this gravely aggravating factor of uncontrolled, clandestine arbitrariness. But also in the case of John Paul II’s encyclical, the Pope’s primary purpose in #80 is not to pass a considered judgment on torture as such – a question of ‘special’ moral theology. Rather, he is concerned to assert a much more general truth pertaining to ‘fundamental’ moral theology, namely, the falsity of recent ‘proportionalist’ theories, according to which practically any specific kind of human action could be justified under certain conditions. What the Pope wants to insist on here, in opposition to such theories, is simply that there do really exist classes of actions which are intrinsically morally evil, and which, therefore, can never be justified under any circumstances. And Gaudium et Spes #27 simply happens to furnish the Pope with a convenient, ready-made set of examples to help him illustrate his point. But even here, while the first examples given by Vatican II (murder, genocide, abortion, etc.) certainly serve the Pope’s purpose, not all of those further down the list do so – at least, not without further definition, amplification or clarification. . . .

Like "deportation" and "subhuman living conditions", Fr. Harrison asserts that "a hasty and strictly literal interpretation of what this passage says about torture would not accurately reflect the mind and intention of John Paul II. That is, VS #80 cannot legitimately be read as containing a formal judgment on the part of the Pope to the effect that the voluntary infliction of severe pain is, as such, 'intrinsically evil'."

Fr. Harrison points out three practices that do merit the description of "intrinsically unjust" according to Catholic doctrine:

"Torture for extracting confessions of a crime of which one is accused"

"Torture carried out on those not even accused formally of any crime or offence, simply in order 'to frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred'"

"Torture, or indeed, mutilation or any other kind of physical or psychological violence against the person, carried out not by public authority in accordance with a norm of law, but by those acting arbitrarily and clandestinely, without any legal authority (even if they should happen to be heads of state, secret police, etc.)." According to Fr. Harrison, the majority of those acts of torture presently occuring in the world fall into this category.

However, he goes on to consider a fourth scenario: the infliction of pain in the effort to obtain information for the saving of lives (the possible rationale for torture not mentioned in the Catechism).

. . . there remains the question – nowadays a very practical and much-discussed one – of torture inflicted not for any of the above purposes, but for extracting life-saving information from, say, a captured terrorist known to be participating in an attack that may take thousands of lives (the now-famous ‘ticking bomb’ scenario). As we have noted above, this possible use of torture is not mentioned in the Catechism. If, as I have argued, the infliction of severe pain is not intrinsically evil, its use in that type of scenario would not seem to be excluded by the arguments and authorities we have considered so far. (John Paul II’s statement about the "intrinsic evil" of a list of ugly things including torture in VS #80 does not seem to me decisive, even at the level of authentic, non-infallible, magisterium . . . My understanding would be that, given the present status question is, the moral legitimacy of torture under the aforesaid desperate circumstances, while certainly not affirmed by the magisterium, remains open at present to legitimate discussion by Catholic theologians.

Jimmy Akin & Fr. Harrison

While Harrison's study is more substantial, it is worth noting that in his two musings on the subject, one of Mark's fellow Catholic apologists, Jimmy Akin, registers opinions that are similiar, to Fr. Harrison's own:

There have been a number of statements in Magisterial and semi-Magisterial documents condemning torture, but these do not offer technical definitions of what torture is, and having a good definition is a precondition for formulating a solid response to finely posed moral questions on the topic. . . .

At this point we don't have a good definition for torture--one that will allow it to be distinguished from other uses of the infliction of pain (mental or physical) to ensure compliance with various goals--and so at present moral theologians have the liberty to hash out the question until the issue matures to the point that, should it be warranted, an official response would make sense.

The Catechism's discussion of torture (CCC 2298) focuses significantly on the motive that is being pursued in different acts of torture. If it means us to understand that having a particular motive is necessary for an act to count as torture then it might turn out that some acts commonly described as torture are in fact not torture--just as some acts commonly described as stealing are not actually the sin of stealing, such as taking food to feed one's family during a time of starvation when the person who initially had the food has plenty. The same might turn out to be true of torture (i.e., not everything that looks like torture would be the sin of torture).

For example, the Catechism's list of motives for torture does not mention the use of physical pressure to obtain information needed to save innocent lives. It thus might turn out that it is not torture to twist a terrorist's arm behind him and demand that he tell you where he planted a bomb so that it can be defused and innocents can be saved. Certainly the kind of things that Jack Bauer may do on 24 are very different morally from the kinds of things that happened in Soviet prisons.

I would be disinclined to go the route of saying that torture is not always wrong. I think that the Church is pretty clearly indicating in its recent documents that it wants the word "torture" used in such a way that torture is always wrong. However, I don't think that the Magisterium has yet thoroughly worked out all the kinds of "hard case" situations one can imagine and whether they count as torture.

If I am not mistaken, Dave Armstrong comes to similar conclusions in his deliberation of the subject, when he claims: "Certain clearly specified, morally acceptable forms of coercion in limited amounts for extremely important strategic and preventive purposes is no worse than warfare itself, which the Church has never condemned in toto."

For Fr. Harrison, Jimmy Akin, and Dave Armstrong, there are actions which count as torture and which are understood to be intrinsically evil. Nevertheless, all three also acknowledge desperate circumstances where the "deliberate infliction of intense pain" would be permitted -- such circumstances involving the need to obtain information (or what some refer to as "actionable intelligence") and which involve the welfare of innocent lives.

Likewise, they appear to be of the opinion that the Magisterial texts and the Catechism are not particularly helpful either in providing a definition of torture or the criteria to evaluate these "hard case" situations. As Jimmy Akin puts it:

If Rush Limbaugh were commenting on the situation, he might--in his own characteristic idiom--refer to such brief condemnations as acts of "drive-by Magisterium" that condemn torture in a brief manner that does not pause to explain in technical detail what torture is or allow finely-tuned moral questions to be answered about it.

In any event, it seems to me that Jimmy Akin and Dave Armstrong would both consider a valid use of coercion in such situations as something other than torture.

I imagine Fr. Harrison would do so as well, although his interchangeable use of the term "torture" and the "deliberate infliction of intense pain" presents an obstacle and source of confusion. For example, his conclusion that "the moral legitimacy of torture under the aforesaid desperate circumstances, while certainly not affirmed by the magisterium, remains open at present to legitimate discussion" -- while similar in substance to Akin and Armstrong, will nonetheless rankle the ears of certain critics.

I confess at this point that I am unable to distinguish between the positions of Harrison, Akin and Armstrong and those of Victor Morton or "Torquemada" of the cheekily titled Coalition for Fog -- neither of whom could be characterized as gung-ho "torture-apologists". If Mark registers his offense at the fact that they've called him names, it sounds like a case of "tit for tat." I don't approve of it, but I understand how those who are on the receiving end of a daily stream of vitriol are tempted to respond in kind.

I've come to the conclusion that the debate on this comes down to mostly semantics and personal hostilities. I saw that early on when I realized that folks (including myself at first) were sloppy in differentiating the terms "torture" and "coercion" in various contexts, thus leading to further confusion (within the framework of cynicism and suspicion on both sides).

Thus, when Mark sees someone like Jimmy Akin (and to a lesser extent, myself) - fellow apologists whom he knows - rendering an opinion unidentical with his own, he is capable of granting that they do it in good faith, whereas if someone he doesn't know or if someone he is personally hostile to (the dreaded "coalition for fog") renders an opinion unidentical with his own, then it is open season for mocking, caricature, and the most cynical interpretation imaginable.

For the record, I'm inclined to agree with Fr. Harrison, Jimmy Akin and Dave Armstrong. Perhaps this makes me an intellectual lightweight, in simply rounding up and voicing my sympathies with those I find persuasive, rather than voicing my own opinions. Then again, I readily concede that these are people who've studied this subject far more thoroughly and have more to offer -- especially Fr. Harrison, who has done us all a favor in researching and compiling what Catholic tradition has to offer in those two very informative pieces.

I've been a Catholic for only a decade and spent most of my years prior to that either Protestant or agnostic. I am not nearly as well-read as you suspect in matters Catholic -- for which reason I decline to blog on certain issues others feel comfortable expounding upon. (When I read Pontifications, for instance, I'm inclined to hang up my keyboard in shame and admit what a hack I truly am.

Part of my motivation for doing these roundups is selfish: when I study a topic, I like to cull together the best articles and commentary I can find and work my way through it -- it's for my own benefit as much as my readers. So if I don't assert an opinion outright it may very well be because I'm still in the process of thinking things through -- reading articles, weighing arguments, assessing positions, in what spare time I have.

Is this "Cafeteria Catholicism of the Right" (Zippy), or "a fair and balanced act (Mark Shea)? You decide. To those who I've disappointed, perhaps someday I'll rise to your expectations.

P.S. I owe Tom McKenna a response. However, I'd like to read some of the articles I've compiled before responding to the assertion that JPII instituted not a development but a break from Catholic tradition on capital punishment. This will obviously take more time than I have available tonight, so perhaps later this week.

I am reluctant to post again on this topic but at the request of a reader, for the sake of documentation and aiding the combox discussion, here is a roundup of recent responses on the topic over the course of the past week:

Since your comment mentions and links my last year's letter to "Crisis" commenting on Mark Shea's article on torture, you and your readers (and perhaps even Mr. Shea) may be interested to read my much more extensive two-part article on the morality of torture which has since been published in Living Tradition. Mr. Shea's Crisis article was a big factor in prompting me to research this difficult and unpleasant subject much more thoroughly. Part I of my article deals with the teaching of Sacred Scripture regarding the ethics of torture, while Part II deals with the witness of Tradition and Magisterium. My bottom line is that you are right and Mr. Shea is wrong. As I see it, the authentic (and much less the infallible) magisterium, correctly understood, does NOT clearly condemn as intrinsically evil the direct (intentional) infliction of severe bodily pain. Mr. Shea's position seems to me a good example of what has been described as "magisterial fundamentalism" (interpreting magisterial statements in a superficial, literalist way without taking account of their literary and historical context, and the previous history of Scripture and Traditon on the subject). The links to my two-part article are:

Doubts About Torture, by Jimmy Akin. October 26, 2006. Jimmy admits he has not been keeping up with the debate, but "[having] briefly chatted with Mark about the matter, my impression is that his position is within the permitted range of Catholic moral thought on this, though his is not the only position within the permitted range of Catholic moral thought." He goes on to offer his thoughts on the possibility of a Responsum ad Dubium from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on this issue (not likely - "Unlike Catholic Answers, the Holy See is not in the business of running a Q & A service"):

. . . There have been a number of statements in Magisterial and semi-Magisterial documents condemning torture, but these do not offer technical definitions of what torture is, and having a good definition is a precondition for formulating a solid response to finely posed moral questions on the topic.

If Rush Limbaugh were commenting on the situation, he might--in his own characteristic idiom--refer to such brief condemnations as acts of "drive-by Magisterium" that condemn torture in a brief manner that does not pause to explain in technical detail what torture is or allow finely-tuned moral questions to be answered about it.

While one would find such a characterization by Rush to display "a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable," such Magisterial acts express a deep moral intuition that torture is wrong, but they have not thus far meditated on this intuition to the point that technical questions can be answered about it. . . .

The truth is that at this point we don't have a good definition for torture--one that will allow it to be distinguished from other uses of the infliction of pain (mental or physical) to ensure compliance with various goals--and so at present moral theologians have the liberty to hash out the question until the issue matures to the point that, should it be warranted, an official response would make sense.

Readers are referred as well to a 2004 discussion on Akin's blog on this subject - What about Torture? June 28, 2004:

The Catechism's discussion of torture (CCC 2298) focuses significantly on the motive that is being pursued in different acts of torture. If it means us to understand that having a particular motive is necessary for an act to count as torture then it might turn out that some acts commonly described as torture are in fact not torture--just as some acts commonly described as stealing are not actually the sin of stealing, such as taking food to feed one's family during a time of starvation when the person who initially had the food has plenty. The same might turn out to be true of torture ( i.e., not everything that looks like torture would be the sin of torture).

For example, the Catechism's list of motives for torture does not mention the use of physical pressure to obtain information needed to save innocent lives. It thus might turn out that it is not torture to twist a terrorist's arm behind him and demand that he tell you where he planted a bomb so that it can be defused and innocents can be saved. Certainly the kind of things that Jack Bauer may do on 24 are very different morally from the kinds of things that happened in Soviet prisons.

I would be disinclined to go the route of saying that torture is not always wrong. I think that the Church is pretty clearly indicating in its recent documents that it wants the word "torture" used in such a way that torture is always wrong. However, I don't think that the Magisterium has yet thoroughly worked out all the kinds of "hard case" situations one can imagine and whether they count as torture.

Finally getting back to the torture discussion - Mark Shea responds to Shawn McElhinnney, Dave Armstrong and the "Coalition for Fog" in a roundabout manner. As before, Victor Morton and company are imbued with the most dubious of motives, of being "driven by an agenda to try to liquidate John Paul's teaching," and "just like Catholics for a Free Choice, laboring to persuade Catholics to ignore that teaching [on torture] using much the same sort of rhetorical trickery."

Mark goes on to portrays his dispute with the 'Coalition' thus:

Armstrong, it is worth noting again, does not seem to me to be engaged in this project of simply trying to ignore John Paul. I think he misunderstands me to some degree, given that he seems to be under the impression I think the Magisterial teaching is infallibly defined, and given that he seems to be under the impression that the argument is about what acts constitute torture. That's not what the discusssion, at least with Coalition types, is about. The discussion is not about defining torture (when we are talking about Veritatis Splendor). It is an argument rather between those who say "Assuming we all agree that X is torture, X is *always* wrong by its nature" and those who say, "Assuming X is torture, X is sometimes (such as when the Bush Administration wants to do it) OK." The Church's teaching is that torture is *always* wrong. Always. Without exception or excuse.

No. VS is not an infallible definition. It is, however, an authoritative teaching. That it is a recent development is of absolutely no consequence to our obligation to obey it. That it presents difficulties to Fr. Harrison is of absolutely no consequence in our obligation to obey it. That other issues, like slavery, present difficulties to Cardinal Dulles, is of absolutely no consequence to our obligation to obey it. But this, in the end, is all the Coalition has going for it as it labors to persuade, if not other Catholics, at least each other that those who advocate obedience to the Magisterium are idiots who have failed to split the difference between past practice and present teaching.

Dave Armstrong took Mark to task in his combox, requesting evidence to back up his portrayal of his critics as such. Like Dave, I think Mark's portrayal bears little relation to the actual participants involved. There is simply no question as to what Fr. Harrison himself thinks of torture and its moral worth in his theological analysis of the subject. I would add that, to express sympathy for (and to take seriously) Fr. Harrison's comprehensive analysis of this issue and criticism of Shea's approach does not necessarily render one a practioner of "rhetorical trickery," out to "liquidate John Paul II's teaching," or to argue that "assuming X is torture, X is sometimes (such as when the Bush Administration wants to do it) OK." Mark, wholly convinced this is the case, is invited to point out specifically where the 'Coalition for Fog' fits this description. Personally I think his post vindicates Carson's criticism of the problems inherent in his approach ("Just Say It LOUDER", (The Examined Life). Oct. 17, 2006).

I look forward to the continued exchange btw/ Scott Carson, Shawn McElhinney & David Armstrong -- and perhaps Michael Liccione's interaction with them as well. It is to their credit that they are engaging this issue and even at times expressing very real disagreements in the manner that they have.

And I'll echo Dave Armstrong's suggestion to his own readers: read Cardinal Dulles, read Fr. Harrison -- because Fr. Harrison touches on practically all the arguments put forth by the "Coalition," and can only serve to inform this discussion.

Mark revisits his Crisis magazine piece against Michael Ledeen and Linda Chavez (Toying with EvilCrisis March 2005) as grounds for adopting his particular approach

I got involved in this whole fracas when it became clear to me that some on the Right (namely Michael Ledeen and Linda Chavez, who inspired my "Toying With Evil" piece were advocating "entering into evil" and "doing things we know to be morally wrong" (Ledeen's words) and, more concretely, suggesting that we concretize these evil counsels by a) shooting unarmed wounded combatants and b) torturing people.

. . . Maybe the temperature of the rhetoric has cooled enough for us to address the most important aspect of the debacle: Torture and abuse are not only wrong and disgusting. They are stupid and counterproductive. A person under torture will provide whatever statements he believes will end the pain. Therefore, the "information" he provides is fundamentally unreliable. He is not responding to questions; 99 percent of the time, he's just trying to figure out what he has to say in order to end his suffering. All those who approved these methods should be fired, above all because they are incompetent to collect intelligence.

Torture, and the belief in its efficacy, are the way our enemies think. And remember that our enemies, the tyrants of the 20th century, and the jihadis we are fighting now, are the representatives of failed cultures.

Our greatness derives from the superiority of our culture, and we should, as the sports metaphor goes, stick with what got us here.

The exchange between Shea and Rake took place on Amy Welborn's Open Book, with Rake contending that "I think you are cherry-picking to make [Ledeen] look as bad as humanly possible." Shea gave no inclination then of moderating his evaluation of Ledeen in light of his comments on torture, and hasn't since. However, in his response to me, he cites practical arguments from Richard W. Comerford that closely mirror Ledeen's own objections.

Mark then proceeds to offer an apology of sorts, but in the same breath excuses himself by insisting that

"I really do feel as strongly about this as I would if a group of people came on my blog (some of them no doubt well meaning) and pleaded with me to find every loophole, excuse, justification, and nuance in favor of partial birth abortion."

So much for the reasoned protests of Rich Leonardi, Victor Morton, Daniel Darling, and other erstwhile inhabitants of Shea's combox.
* From what I understand, Christopher Fotos was blogging under the pseudonym "Christopher Rake" at that period in time.

. . . on the subject of torture we are asking those who have seized on this as a major agenda item of theirs to give the rest of us the most basic of courtesies and explain themselves. Define for us what in a workable sense constitutes "torture" and what does not. Notice we are not asking for an abstract manualist definition of the term but one which can be applied to real life situations with reasonable assurance that it provides a point of reference on the subject in question.

With that in mind, Shawn then undertakes an examination of Mark's position given his starting point with Gaudium et Spes ("whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself"). He demonstrates that those like Fr. Harrison, Victor Morton and company, who have questioned papal pronouncements and conciliar documents on this issue, are engaged in something more than what Shea casually dismisses as "looking for excuses, loopholes, apparent contradictions" or "attempting a direct assault on the Magisterial teaching of the Church."

I think one KEY component to understanding this discussion and the motivation of people like Mark is the question of levels of authority in Church teaching; how we give our assent to ALL Church teaching on a subject, old AND new; how we read Church documents "honestly" when they seem to conflict. . . .

There are those who think that the latest passage always trumps in every possible way: the Ultramontanists, if you will, for lack of any better term leaping to mind. Then there are those, who see an apparent contradiction between the latest thing from Rome and past teaching, i.e, the issue of "novelties", as Harrison calls them, and who simply discard or reject the latest teaching: the Traditionalists.

But there are also those who think that a harmonization is necessary and that involves substance, not just rhetoric. I.e, if Vatican Two's teaching on religious freedom seems to contradict earlier teaching, a harmonious understanding of its substance may be found in language which shifts the proper understanding back a bit toward earlier formulations, while preserving the essence of the new concerns.

This effort to "Harmonize" Church teaching, which Harrison represents fairly well, is not what Mark and others would have it be: a dishonest attempt to dissent from present teaching. But as long as he thinks it is, discussion on some of the foundational questions about this debate will remain difficult or impossible. . . .

I don't know how to sum all this up except to plead for this issue to be raised frankly and discussed charitably on blogs and in comments. And for there to be real charity on both sides in the discussion...however misled or wrong one of another party may be, the shared concern of most of us is to discover and hew to genuine Catholic teaching. That may result in distortions or mistakes along the way, but the way must be walked. Better if we can do it to some extent together. And certainly the discussion on torture will remain mired in invective and rhetoric unless it is put on the table.

I think that both Fr. Harrison, Victor Morton and I. Shawn McElhinney have demonstrated how one can approach this debate in a charitable manner. If they wish for a suitable response (one that rises above the imputation of dubious motives), they may find it in Michael Liccione (Sacramentum Vitae), who in two recent posts -- Torture and the Church (October 13, 2006) and "Why her condemning torture doesn't discredit the Catholic Church" (October 15, 2006) -- responds to an Anglican critic, on the proposition that

"If a Church or communion of Churches authorises, condones and engages in an activity with virtual unanimity through its official organs of authority over an extended period of time, this constitutes a definitive teaching affirming the moral goodness of that activity."

I for one am interested in the potential exchange.

Mark Shea's Characterization of the Bush Administration

I would like to address, once more, Shea's (mis)use of Abu Ghraib. But first, touching on his
cynical approach to President Bush, she can't help but assume the worst:

This brings us back to the teaching of the Church, which has not only a negative but a positive formulation. The negative formulation is "Torture is intrinsically immoral." Endless electrons have been spent on the question, "What, exactly, is torture?" Our own President finds himself baffled by what on earth "outrages on human dignity" could possibly mean. It's all so murky and confusing!

So, while it may be salutary for a Christian to keep the prohibition from violence in mind while thinking about torture, as a philosophical starting point it is not going to be of much help. Nor may we begin to search for necessary and sufficient conditions by presupposing that what we are looking for are levels of violence that are "too great" or "morally unacceptable" since that again begs the question. George Bush made this same point in his notoriously colloquial way the other day, drawing derision from the likes of Jon Stewart and Mark Shea, but it is worth noting that the expression used in the Geneva Conventions--"outrages on human dignity"--is not a univocal expression. The Geneva Conventions do not bother to stipulate what an "outrage" is nor what "human dignity" is. As Christians, we believe we have some inkling as to what we mean by the latter, but we have no grounds for assuming that what we mean by "human dignity" is what everyone else means by it, or even that it is what the authors of the Geneva Convention meant by it. Mark Shea does a disservice to those who point this out in good faith by portraying them as making an obvious and outrageously stupid error. The implication is that George Bush is either a cynical sophist or an ignorant moron (or perhaps both); although he may be, his asking what an "outrage against human dignity" means is not evidence for the claim--it is a perfectly reasonable question to ask when one is trying to decide whether what one is doing is morally justifiable or not and folks are sticking Geneva Conventions under your nose in answer to your question. In short, pointing to the Geneva Conventions is not merely vague, it also begs the question, since the very point at issue is whether these actions are morally licit.

Defending his posting of images from Abu Ghraib, Mark asserts that

. . . the [Bush] Administrationwas all about more Abu Ghraib's and would have gotten their wish if they had succeeded in loosening the regulations on interrogation. However, the Army, to their great credit, defied Cheney's attempt to do this and instead made clear that prisoner abuse was not in keeping with the traditions of our honorable troops.

And, later on in the post:

It does not follow that what the experts say is always going to conform to Catholic teaching (how should I know?). But given that the Bush Administration tried hard recently to alter long-standing regulations for the Army to make the definition of prisoner abuse fuzzier and the Army responded by make it clearer what could not be done to prisoners, I'm inclined to trust the experts on the ground interrogating people rather than the meddling bureaucrats with a proven record of approval of torture and prisoner abuse.

The gist of Mark's argument and the impression he gives is that the Bush Administration is fighting "tooth and nail" to give the CIA the same freedom to commit the same atrocities that occurred at Abu Ghraib. But it seems to me that Abu Ghraib is rather a demonstration of the kind of abuse that can occur "on the ground" in an uncontrolled, unsupervised environment -- as when the specific responsibilities of interrogation and obtaining "actionable intelligence" are delegated to individuals lacking professional training in that area.

Here, then, is an exclusive interview Army Reserve Brigadier General Janis Karpinski (on truthout.org -- by no means "Bush-friendly", so please, no accusations of stumping for the Administration) -- which supports this reading of events. Karpinski was in charge of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in the fall of 2003, when the abuses occurred. She was reprimanded and demoted to Colonel for her failure to properly supervise the prison guards, and is the highest ranking officer to be sanctioned for the mistreatment of prisoners.

When questioned on the specific involvement of the CIA in the detainee abuses, I found her response suprising:

MC: Do you think the CIA is involved? Did you have any contact with the CIA at all, in terms of their involvement with the interrogations?

JK: Marjorie, I have to tell you that from July onward, even up until December, I wouldn't say regularly, but it was often, that I encountered somebody from the Task Force, from the CIA, from Special Operations, and by and large, they were professionals. They were absolutely the consummate professionals.

Now I don't know if they ran separate facilities, and I don't know what techniques they use. I do know that when they determined that somebody they were holding in one of their facilities no longer had any value and they wanted to turn them over to us, at Abu Ghraib, most likely, they turned them over with full medical records. They turned them over with a whole file of interviews and interrogations, and they turned them over in relatively good health, particularly given the situation. So I think that - this is only my conclusion - but I think that techniques in the right and responsible hands are used appropriately. I mean, I never saw anybody under the control of the Task Force or under the control of the CIA who came in bruised, bloody, beaten, and, you know, stitched together. Occasionally we did see the aftermath of a gunshot wound, but these were higher-value detainees, if there was cross-fire or if there was a bullet, but they treated those kind of wounds. That would be my impression.

However, these same techniques or suggestions of aggressive techniques that were designed, in my opinion - again, I don't know this first-hand - but all of these reports now would indicate that these techniques were designed and tested and implemented down at Guantánamo Bay and in Afghanistan. And when you take those same techniques and put them in the hands of irresponsible and non-accountable people, like these civilian contractors were, you are combining lethal ingredients. And what happens? You get civilian contractors who have a playground, and they get out of control. And unfortunately, at Abu Ghraib they suck the military into that same playground. There's no doubt in my mind that they ordered these things to be done.

MC: Who is "they?"

JK: They being the civilian contractors - Titan, CACI. The majority of those contractors were either in Guantánamo Bay or Afghanistan prior to being sent to Abu Ghraib. There were a lot of translators who were working for Titan. Some of them were locally hired, some of them were brought in from the United States. And they were given an opportunity to upgrade their positions to be interrogators - without any kind of formal training whatsoever. So now you have a deadly mix. You have people who have been exposed and who have used these techniques first-hand in other locations. They know that there is no supervision or control. They have been directed, using whatever words, to get Saddam, get the information and get these prisoners to start talking, use more aggressive techniques. So you have allowed people who have no responsibility whatsoever to use techniques that were originally, perhaps originally designed and used by very experienced hands. And it got out of control. It clearly got out of control.

In my last post, I raised the issue of "independent contractors" (The UnaccountablesAmerican Prospect September 2006 ) who were placed in positions of responsibility for interrogation and who operate without accountability or under the jurisdiction of the army, such that while instances of abuse by the Army are routinely investigated, "instances of contractor abuse are vastly underreported by victims -- and underinvestigated by the military."

According to a Salon.com article, "The use of civilian contractors is key to understanding Abu Ghraib" ("Contract to torture", by Osha Gray. August 9, 2004):

As the full Taguba report makes clear, private contractors held many sensitive positions at the prison. The wealth of classified documents suggests that once the administration decided to privatize military intelligence operations -- giving inexperienced contract workers nearly unlimited power over detainees -- with only a pretense of military oversight, the door to prisoner abuse was thrown open.

Among the individuals not qualified for sensitive interrogation positions at Abu Ghraib were many hired by CACI International, a Virginia company that provided intelligence services to the U.S. military, and Titan Corp., a San Diego company that supplied translators. According to an investigation released July 21 by the Army's inspector general, a third of contract interrogators at Abu Ghraib "had not received formal training in military interrogation techniques, policy, and doctrine."

The problem might not have been so serious if there had been only two or three contract workers on interrogation teams. But according to the Taguba report and an inside source, all 20 of the interpreters at Abu Ghraib worked for Titan. The classified documents contain an organizational chart that indicates that on Jan. 23, 2004, nearly half of all interrogators and analysts employed at Abu Ghraib were CACI employees.

On the problems presented by the use of non-military personnel for interrogation, see also the Amnesty International report, Outsourcing Warfare (Summer 2004).

Which, all in all leads me to suspect that the causes of Abu Ghraib are a little more complex than Mark lets on.

Based on the articles cited, one could argue that the presence of "independent contractors" delegated to oversee interrogations at Abu Ghraib, without adequate training and under minimal supervision, was a prevalent and unaddressed flaw in the Bush Administration's handling of the war on Iraq and the WoT.

One could discuss whether the later interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Muhammad meet the criteria for torture and whether they should be rightly rejected. (Q: Is it necessary for us to conclude that they are intrinsically evil, or that they must constitute torture before deeming them objectionable? -- Ed Graham argues, "whether it is 'torture,' . . . is not a simple, clear cut legal question. What seems clear to me about waterboarding is that it constitutes inhumane treatment of prisoners and is immoral under, e.g., Catechism of the Catholic Church# 2313.").

However, I maintain that to slap some shocking photos of detainee abuse from Abu Ghraib on a blog and suggest that "Dick Cheney wanted this," or that the Bush administration "wanted more Abu Ghraibs" -- does not accurately convey what happened at Abu Ghraib, but wrongfully conflates the CIA's interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Kalid Shaikh Mohammad with the acts of pure sadistic cruelty at Abu Ghraib.

"Far too many people are just too eager to mock people charged with serious responsibilties and hence endure enormous temptations. Every time I hear the word "torture apologist," "Bushie," etc, I think that it makes no sense to denounce an evil while engaged in the evil of character assassination. How many insults can support a moral argument? How many attacks on the character of a person can build a strong foundation?"

In his response to Krauthammer (Symposium: The Truth about Torture), Fr. Neuhaus likewise appears to argue for a similar distinction (or against such a conflation) when he asserts:

We are not talking here about the reckless indulgence of cruelty and sadism exhibited in, for instance, the much-publicized Abu Ghraib scandal. We are speaking, rather, of extraordinary circumstances in which senior officials, acting under perceived necessity, decide there is no moral alternative to making an exception to the rules, and accept responsibility for their decision. Please note that, in saying this, one does not condone the decision. It is simply a recognition that in the real world such decisions will be made.

Two prominent cases discussed in the "torture debate" are the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah, the first Osama bin Laden henchman captured by the United States after 9/11, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, dubbed "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks" by the 9/11 Commission and responsible for a good number of terrorist plots including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Operation Bojinka plot, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles' U.S. Bank Tower, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, and the murder of Daniel Pearl. [Source: Wikipedia entry].

While we have the luxury of taking a careful, leisurely -- while still being academic -- approach to this issue, there are people suffering. Is enough being done or are we just giving lipservice?

I share that concern. As citizens, our capacity for doing something on this very issue is unfortunately limited -- we can draw attention to abuses when and where they occur, and support organizations that do the same. We can also exercise our vote, with the hope that those legislators we elect will make the right decision.

And as long as we're discussing these issues in the first place, we can do our best to have an informed discussion -- meaning an accurate presentation of each others' positions, supplemented by research, and a measure of civility and charity which I think are integral to this process. These posts are an attempt to provide a vehicle for such a discussion. Like other roundups, I do this for my own benefit. Like you, I'm in the process of thinking through (and educating myself on) this issue.

Call me naive, but it seemed to me that a bait and switch was going on -- aided by the posturing of the White House. Up until the actual bill, the issue was specific "torture-lite" techniques: is waterboarding acceptable or not? Prolonged sleep-deprivation? Cold cells? But once the bill was passed, the word habeas corpus became the big thing.

On rare occasions, President Bush and his toughest critics agree on something. That will happen today when Bush signs the Military Commissions Act, while claiming "clear" authorization from Congress for "enhanced" CIA interrogations. Many critics claim the bill authorizes torture. Fortunately, both sides are wrong.